Author: Jack Marshall

More on the TikTok “Men For Harris” Video

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

If this is a parody, and I am now 99% convinced that it is thanks to EA’s crack commentariat, I have some further observations to follow-up on the previous post, written while I was in a state of web-hoax-induced confusion:

  • The main reason I fell for this is confirmation bias. In my view, it is only slightly more ridiculous and tone deaf than many other genuine aspects of Harris campaign, her rhetoric, and her general contempt for the intelligence of the American people. I didn’t suspect for a second that the video was satire—that’s how little respect I have for Harris, her staff and her party at this point. I won’t apologize for that; it is deserved.
  • The main thing that set me up to be punked  is the absurd attempt by Democrats and the Axis media to frame Harris’s silly (and quite possibly domestic abuser) husband as some kind of role model for the 21st Century non-toxic male, and the equally ridiculous characterization of Knucklehead Walz as “America’s Dad.” Those parody manly-men are no less credible than Walz and Doug.
  • I was informed of the video by several previously reliable “Harris craziness” hawks, and I’m pretty sure they were fooled too. But I’m supposed to be more trustworthy than they are.
  • That a former Jimmy Kimmel writer circulated the thing should have tipped me off, as well as the fact that it was on TikTok.  Kimmel is pure scum, an ethics corrupter, and anyone who would take a check from that creep is inherently suspect.
  • Ethics Alarms has fallen for hoaxes before, not many, but a few. In each case, it has been the result of satire that did not sufficiently announce itself as satire. This is unethical. Fooling people is one thing; fooling them to the extent that they act on false information is something else, and indefensible. The claim by such sowers of chaos is always that those fooled were at fault, because it is “obvious” that the hoax was a joke. Wrong. It is the ethical obligation of anyone who plants a deliberate lie for a humorous purpose to state, clearly and unmistakably, that the satire is not fact.
  • Releasing a video like that in a political campaign is particularly heinous, and is the kind of misconduct that creates support for censorship.

“Holy Fuck” Indeed. Stereotyping? What’s That? [Updated]

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Update: This video may be a parody, which raises further ethical issues that I discuss in the follow-up post. For now, I will leave this as written.]

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The most incompetent Presidential campaign in modern history hits a new low, raising the question, “How low can it go?” In addition to the hilarious selection of actors (these are all actors, you know, although that guy talking about how much weight he can lifts is terrible) to represent manly men, the ad is predicated on the theory that men are morons and won’t be turned off by the demeaning stereotypical assumptions it represents.

The equivalent ad aimed at women would have Vegas showgirls, strippers and Sydney Sweeney talking about the rights of the unborn.

What an insult. And what an indictment of Harris’s advisors and staff.

Prof. Turley on Harris’s Damning Reversal on Gun Control

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

When Kamala Harris finally answered some specific questions about the gun she owned and would use to blow home invaders away, as she told Oprah, it marked another highlight in the most dishonest and insulting of all Presidential campaigns at least since 1840. I had already expressed dubiousness about Harris’s surprising transformation into Dirty Harry here, and this week, in segments of the “Sixty Minutes” interview to be aired on Sunday, Harris was seen telling one of CBS’s Democratic operatives that she has fired the gun at a firing range (This should be verified, like her alleged McDonald’s stint, which has not been) and that it is a Glock, a semi-automatic handgun, even as Harris’s gun-hating party and President keep calling semi-automatics “weapons of war.”

The dizzying and mock-worthy reversal mandates an Ethics Alarms post, but Jonathan Turley beat me to it, and did such a terrific job (he even quotes “True Grit,” one of my favorite novels and my most cherished John Wayne film) that I’m going to send you over to his blog.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from the post. Turley appears to almost as disgusted with Harris as I am. The problem is that everyone isn’t.

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Friday Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

Tomorrow, eight months after my wife’s sudden death, is the memorial event that a good friend and my sister, among others, organized because I couldn’t face it…still can’t, truthfully. I have to speak, and I’m determined to do better than this weatherman, but I still don’t know what I’m going to say.

I still have social responsibilities as some friends are flying in from as far away as Seattle, so despite having a lot of work work pressing me and my Ethics Alarms duties, I’m going to be out of the office a lot today. I’m counting on the commentariat once again to provide stimulating ethics content.

I am very grateful for the terrific participants we have here.

Ethics Dunce: Tender Miami Weatherman John Morales

/ Jack Marshall / 52 Comments

Aw, isn’t he caring! A supposedly professional meteorologist gained fans and social media hits by choking up as he covered Hurricane Hurricane Milton. Oooh, it was so big and scary!

Time to retire, John.

Now we know the professionalism rot that has crippled law, science, journalism, academia, politics, the judiciary and so many other fields has struck meteorologists. Morales’s job is, or was supposed to be, relaying information about weather phenomenon, not to show everyone how sensitive and frightened he is. There is no excuse for this, none, never. If you can’t broadcast the explosion of the Hindenburg, a fire, a bomb blast or a murder without either losing control of your emotions or, worse, virtue-signaling with them, then you are in the wrong job.

Furthermore, such a reaction seeds panic. It is as irresponsible as it in incompetent.

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Cowardly Grandstanding Of The Month:

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Yeah, Nike is to blame for biological men invading women’s sports. Sure.

What a lazy, intellectually dishonest, cowardly campaign this is. The people that these women should be petitioning and complaining to are progressives and Democrats who have abandoned their commitment to women’s sports because they are determined to pander to the sweet ‘smell of wokeness in the morning’ emitted by LGBTQ activists.

Women are a huge voting bloc, and the trans community is tiny (though demanding). If women put up a united front against biological men competing in women’s sports and made it clear that they were going to hold the Democratic Party responsible if this absurd distortion of common sense, biology and competitive ethics continues, the issue would evaporate like sweat on Lia Thomas’s stubbly chin.

These women don’t have sufficient integrity to do that, however. They would rather lose while blaming a corporation that gains nothing by injecting itself into a sports policy battle that isn’t any of its business anyway. Women’s sports being destroyed by unethical participation rules is the government’s business, but instead of protecting female athletes, the Democratic Party is rolling over and showing its belly to the trans lobby because it considers the female voting bloc “in the bag.”

This is essentially the same cynical calculation that allows Democrats to support its party’s anti-Israel and anti-Semitic component: they don’t believe reflex-Democrat Jews will ever abandon them for the Republican Party.

At least American Jews aren’t blaming Nike for the explosion of anti-Semitism.

Just To Be Clear, Tim Walz Really Is a Knucklehead

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

Democratic Party VP nominee Tim Walz told Democratic donors at Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home in Sacramento this week that the Electoral College should be eliminated, with the national popular vote determining who is elected President.

What an idiot.

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Two Faint Cheers For the Colorado Supreme Court in “Jerk vs. Jerk”

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It looks like the political correctness Furies who have been swarming around Jack Phillips, the Masterpiece Cakeshop owner whose refusal to bake, decorate and sell same-sex wedding cakes had him targeted for destruction have finally been foiled.The Colorado Supreme Court has dismissed the latest lawsuit against him, though not on the merits. Legal Insurrection has detailed coverage and a retrospective on this almost decade-long drama here.

Remember the old Mad Magazine series called “Spy vs. Spy”? This has been “Jerk vs. Jerk.” I sided with the baker in the original lawsuit over the same-sex wedding cake, though holding even then that the adversaries were being unreasonable. Ethics Alarms advised one, “Oh, bake the damn cake!” and the other, “So find another bakery!” That battle got all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the baker won on what non-lawyers call “a technicality.” Then Phillips was targeted again, as LGTBQ activists apparently considered it a matter of honor to bend him to their will.

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Ethics Dunce: The University of Kansas [Corrected]

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

No, what’s insane is for anyone to watch that video and misunderstand the clear meaning of what lecturer Phillip Lowcock said. I doubt anyone did misunderstand him. This manufactured scandal is conservatives acting like political correctness-addled progressives.

“[If you believe] guys are smarter than girls, you’ve got some serious problems. That’s what frustrates me,” Lowcock says in the video. “There are going to be some males in our society that will refuse to vote for a potential female president because they don’t think females are smart enough to be president. We could line all those guys up and shoot them. They clearly don’t understand the way the world works.”

And he clearly doesn’t understand how university administrators work in age of The Great Stupid. They are weenies. They sacrifice common sense and principles to avoid conflict.

I have read conservative piranha claiming that he said that any man who didn’t vote for Kamala Harris should be shot. No, he said that thinking that women aren’t smart enough to be President is an idiotic reason not to vote for a woman, and they “should be shot” means that such ignorant bigots are useless and a blight on the culture, which isn’t that far off the mark. Now, thinking Kamala isn’t smart enough to be President is something else, and completely reasonable, but Lowcock didn’t say that.

As for “Did I say that? Scratch that from the recording. I don’t want the deans hearing that I said that,” it’s obviously a joke, not a serious cover-up. His tone is humorous. I’ve been a stage director long enough to know when a line is not intended to be taken seriously.

Any conservative social media troll or university administrator who seriously thinks Lowcock’s comment was anything but facetious exaggeration and completely benign should be shot.

I wish Lowcock would stand his ground and refuse to be sacrificed to the God of Perpetual Offense, but he’s already groveling. This is how the censors break you: it’s like Winston Smith having the hungry rats at his face. No job is worth surrendering one’s self respect to save.

Why Would a GOP Candidate for Congress Aspire To Be the Next George Santos?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

This guy needs to pull out of the race. Now. What is the matter with these people? And why does the Republican Party keep nominating them?

In a short clip posted on Republican Derrick Anderson’s campaign website and YouTube channel, the Republican running for an open Congressional seat in Virginia’s 7th District poses alongside a smiling woman and three girls in front of a suburban house and then is shown seen sitting with them at the family table. Anderson is unmarried and childless, and apparently “borrowed” a friend’s family.

“Derrick Anderson is so desperate to mask his anti-abortion views and look like a family man that he’s posing for fake family pictures,” Democratic Party spokesperson Lauryn Fanguen said. “He’s clearly not above misleading Virginians and definitely can’t be trusted to represent them in Congress.”

That seems fair.He seems even less trustworthy than the pro-abortion Democrats who mischaracterize the Dobbs decision and abortion itself in every TV ad I see on their behalf in Northern Virginia.

Anderson’s campaign claims the video innocently shows the veteran posing with “female supporters and their children.”

Right.

George Santos, kicked out of Congress for lying about almost everything to fool half-asleep voters to elect him, still didn’t sink so low as to invent a fake family.

Just say you’re a knucklehead, Derrick. It might work!